U.S. Update News

December 2004

COMPULIFE® Software, Inc.


Can I get your help?

Please go to the bulletin item titled:

"Universal Life - Integration with Life Company Software?"

Compulife is proposing a new feature for our software. In order to offer the feature, we believe we will need your help. Please read on.


Next Monthly Update

We plan to post the January 2005 Internet monthly update to our six monthly update web sites on Thursday, December 30th.

The January 2005 disk update will be processed Thursday, December 30th and the disks will be shipped on that day. You should have the disk update by January 3rd or 4th.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Subscribers who are still receiving disks can save up to $100 per year by switching to updates by Internet. Please read the last section of this bulletin for complete details. Don't wait for your next invoice to make the change. Compulife will bonus your subscription renewal deadline for switching from disks to internet.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Traditionally I use this time of the year to extend my personal thanks to subscribers for their continued support of Compulife. This year is no different. On behalf of myself, my staff and our families, we want you to know how much we appreciate your support. Thank you.

I also use this time of the season to share a personal word in relation to my faith in Jesus. It dawned on me that one might conclude that I do so because I believe Christmas is the most important celebration of the Christian faith. I don't believe that. Christianity is about the good news (called the "gospel") which the Apostle Paul explained when he wrote:

"Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures" (NASB 1 Corinthians 15:1-4

The death, burial and resurrection of Jesus is the foundation for Christian belief. Therefore, the Easter weekend is the most important time of celebration in the Christian year. Because we know that this took place during the time of the Jewish celebration of Passover, and because of the well kept Jewish calendar, the celebration of Good Friday and Easter fall each year around the time of Passover.

By contrast, virtually no one believes December 25th was the birthdate of Jesus. Even so, Christmas is a traditional time to stop and remember that the birth of Jesus was the giving of God's great gift to mankind. The importance of that gift would not be made clear until 33 years later at the time of His death and resurrection.

Personally, I believe that the Spirit of Christmas is the giving of thanks. It gives me an opportunity to express my appreciation to God and fellow man. Once again, thank you. I wish you and yours a wonderful Holiday Season and a Happy New Year.

Universal Life - Integration with Life Company Software?

Here's the spot where we need your help. As background, Compulife is currently making comparisons of U/L policies on a narrow basis. In the U.S. those comparisons are based upon no lapse premiums for U/L products that offer a premium guarantee to at least age 100.

In launching into a new comparison category there is always the likelihood of demand from subscribers who would like MORE information about the new products, more options, more features, etc. When we first offered these U/L comparisons we knew that it would be very hard to get a little bit pregnant.

As we anticipated there seems to be demand for more information, options and features. As we have given consideration to how we might meet that demand we have come up with an idea which would give us a way to provide the best of all worlds. The concept is to have the Home Offices of life companies work with Compulife to create integration between our comparison software and each life company's U/L software. Here's how we would propose it would work:

With the comparison results on screen you would be able to double click on a product to display the single product window; just as you do now. Next to the "Rate Class" button we would add a new button called "Illustrate". When you click on the "Illustrate" button Compulife would launch the U/L software for that company, pass in the information from our software (birthdate, sex, smoking/class, face amount, etc.) then have the life company software display the authorized illustration for the product that the subscriber was looking at in Compulife.

But there's a catch. We need life companies willing to offer software integration with their U/L software. This is where you can help.

In our preliminary discussions with companies, one company asked what feedback we have had from our subscribers who are also selling their policies. I advised that I had no idea which subscribers sell for which companies, and that we had not yet announced the possibility of this feature. I then suggested we would be willing to do a survey but the company hesitated to give us permission to specifically mention their name. First, they didn't want to alert their competition to the fact that they were considering the idea. Second, they didn't want it construed as a commitment to this project.

Having thought about it further, that doesn't stop us from finding out how you feel about the idea. If you would send an e-mail to barneyrl@compulife.com, expressing your support for this feature, and why you think it would help you in your sale of any particular company's products, we'll then post our subscriber's responses at a web page which we can direct everyone's attention to.

The questions you need to address in your e-mail are:

"Would you like software integration between Compulife's U/L comparisons and the individual company software?"

"Why?"

We would appreciate your help and we believe if we can demonstrate significant customer support, that will be an incentive for companies to help us with this project.

Changes for December 1st

There are a couple of important changes we are making effective December 1st. The first is a change to our midmonth update procedure. Instead of having multiple UPDATE?.CMP files we will now have a single midmonth update file which is called UPDATEU.CMP. For those doing manual midmonth updates, this will make the download simpler; one file instead of several.

The second change is that the DOS version of Compulife has been removed from DISK UPDATES. After installing this month's update, if you run the GO.EXE file it will immediately link to the Windows program.

Those who still want to run DOS software need to get updates by Internet. Monthly updates by internet will continue to include the DOS and Windows program until the 3rd quarter of 2005. We expect the early part of 2006 to be very busy time for us, and so we need to move everyone from DOS software to Windows software by the end of 2005.

Given that the DOS software program's days are numbered, we strongly recommend that you learn to use the Windows software. There is no doubt that it is now more powerful than the DOS product. Those who prefer DOS to the Windows program are usually operating with the belief that there is something that the DOS program does that the Windows won't do. If you are one of those people, please give us a call at (800) 798-3488. We can show you how to do the same thing in the Windows version of Compulife.

Improvement to the www.term4sale.com web site

A new feature has now been added to the www.term4sale.com web site. Consumers can now specify the minimum A.M. Best rating when doing comparisons.

Prior to providing A.M. Best ratings at the site, Compulife used a minimum A.M. Best rating of A- which meaning that any company B++ or lower would not quote. With the introduction of A.M. Best ratings, consumers can now review the ratings themselves and so there is no longer a need to filter results. The only thing left was to add the ability for a consumer to have their own filter. This is now finished.

We believe this added feature will be one more reason for consumers and the media to conclude that www.term4sale.com is the most objective and unbiased web site available to consumers.

Coming Next - Bulk Banding for Multi-Life

Primerica Life has a feature it offers to consumers who are buying coverage on multiple lives. If a consumer is purchasing insurance on two lives, the total face amount of coverage determines which rate band is used for each individual. For example, if the first person wants $250,000 of coverage, and the second person wants $250,000 of coverage, then the band used for the individual rates per thousand is $500,000.

This works particularly well for small face amounts. If the first person wants $150,000 of insurance, and the second person wants $100,000, then the band used for both people is the $250,000 band. That can represent a significant saving.

Compulife refers to this as bulk banding and the feature will be added to our multi-life option during December.

Coming After That - Improved Precision

A small but increasing number of companies are quoting from rate tables that have fractional pennies. This is particularly true for U/L - no lapse policies. We intend to introduce a change to our database which will allow us to increase the number of decimal places that we store from two decimals to six decimals. Currently we take products that have fractional pennies in their rates per thousand and round the rates up to the next whole cent. This can make our quotes fractionally higher than they should be.

IMPORTANT: Change Will Require New Internet Engine

This change will require a minor data conversion which will necessitate a change to the data structure. This means that new data will not be compatible with old data. While this will not be a problem for customers who subscribe to our software, because the new program and data will be provided at the same time, it does create a problem for those who use the internet engine.

Therefore, if you are using Compulife's Internet engine, you will need to be ready to replace the engine with the new engine once the new data is introduced. Due to the significance of the changeover, and the fact that everything will need to be implemented and tested before release, we are planning to make this change with the April monthly update.

I apologize for that delay but two events will take me away from the office in the new year; one for a week in January and another for a week in March. Given the importance of the changeover, we need to leave lots of safety room before making the switch.

WARNING

If there is anyone out there, using Compulife's Internet engine, and has not kept their subscription to that engine current, the new data files in April 2005 will NOT WORK with the existing engine. You will need to upgrade the engine in order to continue.

Therefore, if you are a current engine user it would be a good idea to make a note to contact Compulife in March, to ensure you get an updated version of the engine. If you are NOT a current engine user, but still using the engine, you've been warned.

Last Data Modification for DOS

The new April 2005 data file change will be the last change that we plan to make to the DOS version of Compulife. As previously discussed, Compulife will stop offering DOS software effective with the 3rd quarter of 2005. After that, the only desktop software that we will provide will be the Windows version.

Dueling Web Sites

For those who update by Internet, Compulife has gone to great lengths to provide you with redundancy in our web sites. Our main web site is:

www.compulife.com

However, we keep two other completely separate web sites, on two completely different servers, at:

www.compulife.us     or     www.compulife.cc

Whatever we update to compulife.com, we are also updating to compulife.us and to compulife.cc. If one web site goes down, for whatever reason, either of the other two are ready to serve you. That includes both monthly and mid-month updates.

For those doing monthly updates by Internet, we rely on three other web sites to supply monthly updates. These are automatically checked and used by our automatic Internet update software.

Returning Monthly Disk Updates

For those receiving updates by disks, you are responsible to return those disks each month. Not returning disks can lead to the termination of your update service. For those not wanting to return disks there are two ways to eliminate the problem.

1. Switch to obtaining monthly updates by Internet.

Not only will you eliminate the expense and hassle of returning disks, you will save $100 per year in subscription fees.

To switch to Internet monthly updates, go to our web page www.compulife.com and select the last menu choice "Forms, applications, instruction tutorials, etc." Under the section "License Agreements" you will need to select and complete a new License Agreement for the type of license you have. After you have printed the new agreement, please read it, especially the part where you agree that you have successfully downloaded and processed our "mid-month updates". If you haven't done that before, call us and we'll be happy to step you through the procedure. It's easy.

2. Disk Purchase Program

The other way to avoid returning the disks and the disk box each month is to pre-purchase them for $21 per year ($1.75 per month). Once you do that you can keep them for future reference, throw them away or return them for a credit (once each year) when you are invoiced for the following year. $21 costs you less than mailing back disks each month.